


living in the empire

by nefertiti



Category: The Borgias (2011)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Brother-Sister Relationships, F/M, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Sibling Incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-23
Updated: 2016-08-23
Packaged: 2018-08-10 13:14:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,114
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7846489
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nefertiti/pseuds/nefertiti
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rodrigo Borgia was 45 when he became famously known as the King of New York. After enough corporate takeovers they started calling Cesare The Prince.</p><p>The media, their competitors, their friends, they all call the Borgias a cabal of ruthless, greedy, lying, ambitious, opportunistic, nepotistic, social climbers with no conscience, no mercy, and no scruples to be found.</p><p>In some ways, they’re not wrong.</p>
            </blockquote>





	living in the empire

Cesare doesn’t know how he finds himself in his ex-girlfriend’s loft, sitting opposite her in one of her many comfortable, well-used armchairs; but he needs someone to _not_ talk to and aside from Micheletto, she’s just about the only one who wouldn’t pester him into “opening up” and talking about his _feelings_.

Feelings he has for his sister.

His Lucrezia.

Feelings he shouldn’t really have at all.

He and Charlotte were together for a brief spell in college. They broke up before graduation, but they remained good friends; so while Charlotte doesn’t know everything about his relationship with his sister, she knows enough and he suspects, she's guessed at the rest.

He and Lucrezia had always been careful, but never careful enough.

Cesare was twenty-two the first time his sister crawls into his bed and makes him hers forever. That however, isn’t where it starts.

He thinks he was hers from the moment she was born. The moment he looked at her little face and decided he loved her more than he could ever love another single person. He loves her far too much and cares far too little about the consequences of anything really; so long as it makes her happy.

It’s been like this for his entire life. It’s never been a problem before.

“Do you miss her?” Charlotte asks, gently. She didn’t have to specify who she was talking about. He’s always been many things, but never subtle.

“As much as anyone else would, their little sister travelling through Europe on her own.”

“I’ve seen her instagram,” Charlotte says, after a few moments of silence. “She looks like she’s having fun.”

“Well, then I suppose I’m happy for her.” Cesare says. He doesn’t fake a smile. He doesn’t need to. His ex-girlfriend would see right through it anyway.

“Go home Cesare,” she stands up and kisses his forehead.  “And try to sleep while you’re at it.”

-

Lucrezia loves Spain. The streets are beautiful, the weather is perfect, and the people are friendly. She’s never suffered for making friends. People like her. She’s a likeable person. She always has been. Her grandfather back in New York always tells her that it’s because she’s brazen, but he says it in such an admirable tone that Lucrezia can do nothing but accept it as a well-deserved compliment. It’s nothing for her to walk up to a stranger in an unfamiliar place and tell them to show her around. Most people are charmed by her big, blue eyes, her long golden hair and her enchanting smile, and the few that aren’t let her down gently enough.

She doesn’t need a stranger’s friendliness in Spain, however. Her mother’s family are kind to her; they’re excited that she’s there at all. Vannozza sent her family back home enough money to build a grand villa, start a few small businesses, and live comfortably. They were thrilled to let her daughter stay with them for a week or two. Lucrezia’s little brother Gioffre’s lived with them since he was born, with frequent trips to New York when he was younger to visit his brothers and sister that soon became infrequent and then stopped altogether.

She spends as much time as she could with her little cousins. She’s always adored children, and if they’re shy around her at first, it only takes her an hour or so to coax them into treating her like she’s known them for years. Her aunts and uncles flutter around her pinching her cheeks and remarking on how much like her mother she looks, her abuelita - the stern matriarch and clear head of the household - tries to feed her at every turn fussing over her thin bones and showing her old family recipes, her abuelo tells her stories of her mama when she was a child. Even Gioffre is happy to see her though he seems disinterested in hearing about the family in New York or in anything but taking care of his yellow vintage Ferrari in the garage.

There’s a girl, somewhere around her age, who tends to the garden that Lucrezia’s taken a special fondness to and in the moments when her time is her own, she uses Francesca as a convenient tour guide because she seems to know a lot about Spain. She’s an Italian university student in Madrid on a scholarship.

Lucrezia uses all those pretty words and fine graces she learned from her father, her mother, Giulia and at Miss Porter’s to persuade her abuelita into giving Francesca some time off and then she drags the girl out to museums and plays and cafes and sometimes on walks, just so she can feel the sun on her skin.

Francesca is both more and less of a tourist than she is. She has no roots here like Lucrezia does, but she’s been here for three years. If Francesca doesn’t know any secret passageways through the Nasrid palaces, doesn’t want to visit the gardens at midnight and run through the fountains, she provides entertaining commentary as she humours Lucrezia through all the typical tourist haunts that she’s probably visited already. She doesn’t quite have Lucrezia’s exuberance or her daring but Lucrezia enjoys her company anyway.

Her mind travels to her brother often – her mind always travels to her Cesare no matter what she’s doing. A part of her wants to call him, hear his voice, and find out if he’s doing well but the selfish part of her that just wants to keep soaking up the Spanish sun would rather not have the reminder of what sent her travelling through Europe as more of an escape and less of a tour.

She imagines he’s doing well in any case. He always is.

-

The thing about plotting that Cesare’s employees never seem to understand is that he’s much better at it than they are. He may have a flair for the dramatic which is just something that goes hand in hand with being a Borgia- along with a streak of ruthlessness, an urge to always think of what’s better than your best and then surpass that, and a trust fund that could probably stabilise a small island- but he knows how to keep his cool when he needs to. It’s an ability you learn when you grow up with Juan, otherwise you’d have a homicide - or, well, a fratricide - under your belt and he likes to think he doesn’t even know what he’d do if he actually had the force of mind to actually kill his brother but, truth be told, he knows exactly what he’d do. It’s just not really something you go about advertising. He’d pay off any witnesses (because Juan has a personality that just begs for murder a la coffee), call in some favours to get a nice cop an excessive promotion, find a easy target who needs money and give them a reasonable payoff, and call Micheletto and get him to do whatever it is he really does to make sure nothing Cesare does is ever traced back to him.

That’s what he means about keeping his cool.

His partners on the other hand aren’t so skilled. They’re so desperate to claw their way to the top, they stink of it in a way that he easily notices. He was there once after all. However, he was a lot smarter about it.

They think he doesn’t see the stupid way they smirk at each other. That he doesn’t have someone to inform him of their under the table dealings that not only makes him but his entire company look bad. That he doesn’t have the common sense to hire people he trusts to double check their finances to make sure no one’s stealing from him. He doesn’t know whether he should be amused at their foolishness or insulted.

So he does what needs to be done. He takes them all drinking at an uppity Hooters Bar, in other words known as a Gentlemen’s Club. They were all of them rich teenagers at some point, so during the night he introduces some high quality blow into the mix of pills and cocktails and lets them lose their fucking shit as he quietly slips out to gather all the necessary incriminating evidence he needs to cut all ties with these people who plot against him with their petty schemes. He finds what he needs to buy out the shares; of these people who hold no loyalty towards his family, towards the company and most importantly, no loyalty towards _him,_ and bury them.

The board of investors call an urgent meeting the next day and Micheletto leads the bastards in one by one only for them to see Cesare sitting there, bright-eyed and smiling genially with the rest of the board of Borgia Empire.

They start to sweat, and his smile turns savage.

 

“If you don’t look out we’ll own all of New York.” Rodrigo laughs, heartily when he hears about it.

“Why shouldn’t we?” is Cesare’s simple response which just makes his father laugh harder as Juan glowers at them both.

Juan doesn’t congratulate him on his ingenuity. He doesn’t even pretend to smile. He just continues to destroy his liver, a bottle tipped down his throat as their father pontificates on Cesare’s cleverness. Juan always smells of booze or worse these days, but that’s not Cesare’s problem anymore. Whatever bit of value Juan once provided to their family has been used up a long time ago and that makes him little more than worthless to Cesare.

His father is pleased at the takedown but Rodrigo Borgia will blithely support any achievement that lets his family rise a notch higher on the totem pole.

(Rodrigo Borgia was 45 when he became famously known as the _King of New York_. After enough corporate takeovers they started calling Cesare _The Prince_.

The media, their competitors, their _friends_ , they all call the Borgias a cabal of ruthless, greedy, lying, ambitious, opportunistic, nepotistic, social climbers with no conscience, no mercy, and no scruples to be found.

In some ways, they’re not wrong.)

Even more though, Cesare knows his father is pleased that what has been well known for a long time now, has finally been hammered home.

The Borgia family is not a family to be fucked with.

-

Paolo’s hands are as soft as the boy himself. That’s a specific quality she searches for in men. Raffaello and Calvino, the Pallavicini brothers, were her main boyfriends at college; business majors, like she herself was, like both her brothers were, and they were quiet and sweet even as she dangled herself like bait between them, curious to see how they’d react to her wanting them both - having them both - who would snap first, and Alfonso started out sweet, but he – well it’s best for her to not think of Alfonso at all. Whatever he became, that was all on her.

She likes Paolo because he reminds her of her brother, but he is like Cesare in looks alone. Perhaps she could have said Paolo was like her brother if Cesare was kind, and sweet, and naive. Her brother is not, nor will he ever be any of those things. He is never naive. He’s sweet to no one but her. He is kind to no one in general. Some days she wants to hate him for it, but when she breathes, she breathes her love for him, heavy in her lungs building up to her chest; ready to explode. And she knows at the core of her, she wouldn’t have it any other way.

“Do you like the church bella?” Paolo asks.

Paolo has taken her to a secluded chapel in Santa Monica and it truly is as stunning as Paolo described.

She drags him to the little pleasance he described at back of the church near a small water fountain and kisses him. She doesn’t give him time to react; she just wraps her hands around his neck, pulling him down to meet her, and kisses him until she’s breathless.

“I think I love this church,” she smiles.  “It’s beautiful.”

“Not as beautiful as you are,” Paolo whispers, breathlessly.

“Am I beautiful Paolo?” she teases him, curving her palm over his shoulder.

“You’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen,” he answers with a seriousness that makes her close her eyes and imagine another face in Paolo’s stead.

Something about the way he says it reminds her of her brother and she sighs. No, she isn’t going have sex with Paolo like she had planned.

She wanted to fuck someone in every city she visited to get the feel of her brother off of her skin. To remove the taste of him from her mouth. To wash the heady scent of him from under her nose. It wasn’t going as planned. Everywhere she turned, something reminded her of Cesare and it put her off the whole business. Her darling brother who she once thought was sweetness itself, but she now knows is the exact opposite. And the sick part of it all is that she loves him that way more than she could ever admit to anyone.

She had watched her as brother seethed away with resentment when Juan was named junior CEO of the Borgia Empire while her father kept him in marketing. She watched him carefully plan to usurp Juan’s job and get away with it when he did it, with none but her and Micheletto the wiser, toppling Juan off his undeserving throne and taking his place instead.

At that thought her mind travels to the day her father took her with him to the Sforza Enterprises main buildings so he could sign some papers. Gio Sforza was supposed to show her around, entertain her while Rodrigo and Caterina Sforza talked business. She’d come back with a torn blouse, blood between her legs and a scandal that needed to be covered up.

Cesare and Juan beat Gio to a pulp when she came home tearstained, Gio ended up hospitalised and Juan, Cesare and Micheletto were pictured at a club that night with thousands of alibis. Gio ended up paralysed from the waist down. But that wouldn’t have been enough for Cesare.

She knows she’s part of the reason for her brother’s brutal takedown on the Sforza dynasty and the tigress herself.

He believes in complete destruction, her brother.

Ever since that business with the Sforza, everywhere she goes, people fall over their feet trying to please her, but she can see the fear in their eyes, the fear that they’re next in her father’s and brothers relentless reign of taking everything within their grasp and even the things they seemingly can’t. She should have feel guilty, but she couldn’t force herself to. She couldn’t force herself to do anything but relish the Sforza’s destruction, her brother’s ascension to power and the betterment of the family.

When she thinks of these things, she feels just as monster as the rest of her family and it itches underneath her skin.

Paolo and all his sweetness is a lovely distraction from all of her family’s continuous drama. She likes him, if not quite as much as he likes her.

 “Take me out to dinner gondola boy.” Lucrezia whispers in his ear. She smiles as she feels him shiver beneath her hands.

-

Alfonso comes to see him in his office a week later and Cesare would laugh if only he remembered how.

“Your secretary let me in,” Alfonso says before coughing lightly and Alfonso is still hesitant around him which is something that would have flattered him once, but now he barely works up the amusement that allows him to reply,

“I assumed as much.”

Alfonso’s frown deepens as he stares at a pen on the desk between them that he seems to find infinitely more fascinating than whatever it is he came here to say. Some kind soul would have taken pity on him and tried to nudge him along: give him an opening. Cesare has never been kind.

(Ever since he bought out Alfonso’s father’s company, Alfonso started spending less time around Cesare and the time he did spend around him he was passive aggressive and drunk and bordering on a Juan type of irritating and a homicidal feeling would rise up in Cesare’s chest; a feeling that he didn’t want to act on - a feeling that he very much wanted to act on, and so he stopped spending much time at his sister’s manor.

Cesare wants to blame Alfonso for his and Lucrezia’s separation, but it would be unfair. Vannozza had warned him that buying out the Bisceglie family investment firm would make things between him and his brother-in-law even more strained, but he didn’t really give a damn. He never wanted Alfonso to like him. Actually he liked it better when he didn’t. It only gave him a reason to hate Alfonso and he didn’t have a solid one before. (Well he did, but it wasn’t a reason he could very well share with anyone else.) The only thing that bothered him was that Lucrezia saw right through him. She always did. Everyone praised his intelligence, his wit in now holding yet another firm in the palm of his hands and extending his family’s reach in the progress. Lucrezia was the only one with the guts to question him about the buyout. _NaPole is a sinking ship and investors were already fleeing like rats. It would certainly lose you more money than it would gain_ , she had said. _Why would you even want it – unless ... oh Cesare, no._ He couldn’t reply, and she just walked away.

From then on when she visited him at work, or at his penthouse; or when they met each other for coffee, or dinner she would press her lips together, tightly, and talk about everything but Alfonso, or their family, or business.)

When Cesare doesn’t venture a segue, Alfonso looks up at him, dark tousled curls falling in front of his eyes and it makes him look younger than he is. Cesare may never understand what his sister ever saw in this boy. Somehow, despite his twenty-seven years, he was still a boy: not yet a man, not yet ready to face the world, not yet ready to do anything at all on his own really.

Lucrezia always did like herself a fixer-upper, but Alfonso had never been able to hold firm to the shape Lucrezia wanted him to take. He guesses that’s half of the reason that they didn’t last. He knows for sure, he’s the other half.

“I- I need you to. I’m,” he pauses and sighs. To Cesare’s perverse pleasure it looks like it pains Alfonso to get this out. “Lucrezia hasn’t called me since she lef- my lawyer wants to know where she is. If I focus on the gossip mags it seems like she’s in three countries at once. It’s for the divorce papers you see and, well I just figured you’d know how to talk her into signing them when she gets back.”

Alfonso looks almost confused when Cesare has to grit out that outside of postcards, he hasn’t talked to his sister in all the months that she’s been gone, but when Alfonso's feeble little mind finally gets it: his smile is victorious.

Cesare finds that in a way, he can hardly blame him.

-

Lucrezia calls him from a blocked number two days later and there are ways for him to get around that, find out where she is at this exact moment but he won’t. She asked him to respect her need for space and he’s only ever been a willing disciple where his sister was concerned.

Neither of them say anything for a while and its strange how Cesare could feel whole again just by listening to Lucrezia’s shallow breaths over the phone.

“I miss you,” she breaks the silence, almost so quietly he strains to hear her. “I’ve made so many new friends everywhere I go and I keep thinking _my brother would love him_ or _Cesare would think she’s full of_ _shit_. It makes sense that I miss you. You miss me too,” she says knowingly.

She isn’t wrong.

“Do you remember when we were kids and summer was over and we had to go back to boarding school, how we would both cry at the thought of not seeing each other for a few months. You started holding back your tears when you got older and your loser, boy genes started kicking in but I knew you wanted to and it just made me wail louder - you see these are the things I’m thinking about when I should be thinking about anything else, everything else,” she sighed the last few words.

“Don’t!” she says sharply before he even knew he was going to speak. “If you say a word I’ll come rushing home and I need to keep doing this for myself. It may be selfish but I just wanted you to know. Seeing all the wonders of the world, all the beauty, it just feels little less beautiful when I can’t share it with you.”

The phone cuts off and his _loser boy genes_ are the only thing that stops him from crying like a damn kid.

-

Lucrezia hasn’t seen Cesare in months and she’s not sure what it’s doing to her, but it’s nothing good. She can’t stop herself from missing him with every breath, every turn.

She has a life outside of her brother of course. She always has. She has her parents, her friends; but she finds that it’s him she craves the most. She feels like she’s taken their easy companionship for granted now that she no longer has it.

She writes him letters she has no intention of sending. In some of them she tells him how she loves him. In others she curses him out using words he’d probably be surprised to hear from her. In others, the ones she tears up into tiny pieces, the ones that no one but her should ever see, she tells him how she misses his touch, his kisses, so fleeting, the way he feels inside her: how no one else has ever been able to compare. She sends postcards instead. Postcards are easy. Simple. You sound cordial in them even if all you do is sign your name.

He isn’t to blame for anything in any case. It would be so easy if he was, but it’s her. It’s taken her all this time to realise it but it’s always her. She’s the one who destroys everything she touches. She takes something sweet and innocent – like her husband ... soon to be ex-husband – and she ruins it. The only person she’s never destroyed is Cesare.

She took this tour through Europe, technically as the golden girl of the Borgia Empire and the face of La Bellas, the chain of fashion stores she, and her mother, and her stepmother created, and overseeing her father’s out of country establishments and the boutiques in Paris, Rome and London (she reports home to her father and to her mother and to Guilia every time she boards the Borgia jet). This trip is more work than anything, but she’s not going to miss out of a chance to have some fun while she’s at it. She is, after all, a Borgia. She organises soirées in France, hosts galas in England, goes to raves in Amsterdam. Whether she’s socialising with the highest in society, or dancing with the middle class she’s always beautiful, always charming, and always ready for a good time.

She’s completely exhausted by the end of the day of course, but that’s what she wants. It’s methodical, her partying. She can’t battle through her fog of tiredness enough to think too hard on anything and by the time she goes to bed, she falls asleep the minute her head hits the pillow. It’s the coward’s way out; this trip was supposed to be one of contemplation, but she doesn’t like what she sees in her introspection. She sees herself, a serpent biting her venom into everything and watching them slowly die, seeing herself pretend she’s blameless when she’s the only one to be blamed, she sees herself as she truly is and she doesn’t like it one bit.  And so, she throws parties.

An impending divorce, yet she’s got a never-ending smile on her face. She’s sure the gossip mags in New York will be all too pleased to write stories of their favourite heiress and how heartless she is, like ice. She doesn’t care, though she imagines her family’s response to it all.

Her mother’s already called her numerous times and warned her to be careful, but she seems satisfied, even amused by her daughter’s escapades. Giulia, Lucrezia assumes, would be tentatively pleased to see that she’s enjoying herself again. Her father wouldn’t read the gossip columns (ever since she was a child he calls everyone involved in the tabloid industry wastes of existences.) but he’d be thrilled that she’s having a good time even if it is at his expense. Her father has always been lax with financials where the matter of her happiness is concerned. With Juan, it’s difficult to tell. He might be happy for her, or maybe he won’t, maybe he’d just be indifferent. It’s hard to tell how he feels about anything since he started using heroin. Cesare is difficult in an entirely dissimilar way.

Cesare has always hated excess, though he excuses it in her – excuses anything in her that can make her smile. Still, she hopes he’d smile when he sees her pictures plastered everywhere, knowledge that she’s smiling even if smiling doesn’t always mean you’re happy.  

She doesn’t have to wonder if he still loves her, he does. She has faith in his love as night has faith that day will follow. But she does wonder how he’ll react to the glamorous parties she keeps throwing in every country she lands. He isn’t in front of her so she could read his face the way she does, like tea leaves, or like a song that she knows all the words to.

-

Cesare hasn’t seen Lucrezia in five months bordering on six, and surprisingly enough he’s alright.

That’s a lie. It’s a lie he’s convinced himself of, but a lie nonetheless. His soul aches with just the thought of her and how he fucked everything up. His mind drifts to thoughts every day, every hour.

Mostly he thinks of her the day she left – the day she left him. Her beautiful, golden hair twisted haphazardly into a braid. Her soft lips pressed against his gently, and then not gently at all. Her quiet whisper of _I’m sorry_ before leaving and taking her bags with her. And that was it. She was gone.

He misses her. He hasn’t admitted that to anyone but they know. He can tell by the way his mother would give him a sympathetic smile ever so often. How his father will send him a quick glance when he mentions her and her travels. How Micheletto ... well Micheletto is Micheletto. His concern displays itself in the form of extra efficiency.  Juan doesn’t seem to care but then again, Cesare never expected him to.

Sometimes he can’t breathe for how much he misses her, but he’s surviving, he’s existing in the present and functioning just fine and that matters. It’s supposed to matter at least.

She sends him featureless postcards everywhere she goes which is – it’s not forgiveness, but it’s something. He just doesn’t know what. It’s like a puzzle he needs to solve but some of the pieces are missing and all he’s left with is a half done picture of a clown juggling god-knows-what.

After her brief spell at their grandparents, Lucrezia never tells him where she is or where she’s going – although he guesses from the postcards -, what she’s doing or who she’s doing it with but he thinks she’s alright. Their father knows where she is and he and his sister are not so far gone that she wouldn’t reach out to him if she needs his help. He knows that much.

She’s doing what she said she always wanted to do if she weren’t tied down by the weights and responsibilities that come with being a part of their family, from being married to someone whose family isn’t so different to their own; she’s travelling the world. In some odd way he’s happy for her. Whenever he thinks about the life that he’s always wanted for himself, he realises as he’s living it and that he’s not any happier for it. He hopes it’s different for her.

Her postcards are always signed _your loving sister_ with her signature scribbled at the bottom which is something that’s not supposed to stop him in his tracks every time he sees it, but does anyway. It means that somewhere in her heart, there’s room left to love him and he cherishes that.

-

Somewhere in New York, Lorenzo ‘il Magnifico’ de Medici dies and one of his unfortunate sons takes over as CEO of Medici Inc.

Lucrezia’s dancing up against a slight, pretty, redheaded girl and a charming man wearing a wifebeater in a club in Sweden when she gets the call.

It could mean big things for her family. Encroaching in on a tragedy is how tricky deals are won and her father knows that better than anyone else, so she prepares herself for whatever comes next.

-

Giulia Farnese Borgia takes Cesare to lunch at one of the hotels his father’s invested in over the years.

Cesare has never been close to his stepmother. She stands next to his father on the cover of magazines, where his mother once stood, where he now stands too and he resented her for it once, but he’s never seen the point of resentment wasted. Giulia and Vannozza have even now formed, a friendship - started a company together - which bewilders both father and son, but he isn’t so petty that he’d continue to take sides in a battle that’s long been resolved.

In any case he finds her an odd and soothing presence. She’s neither sympathetic nor judgemental even though she was once his sister’s closest confidante. And the Medici business had been taking up all his time. He should probably take more breaks than he does.

Giulia sits opposite him in a well tailored dress, her hair in a fancy up-do and her hands clasped together, maroon nails only just pinching fair skin. Everything about her is prim and proper and practically screams of old money. There’s nothing bawdy or vulgar about her in the slightest. It’s a wonder how she got involved with their family at all.

“I haven’t talked to you in some time,” she says in her dreamy-quality voice. “I was starting to think you were avoiding me Cesare Borgia.”

She appears amused though her expression doesn’t betray it, so Cesare just huffs in response.

“When was the last time you rested?” she asks, sounding far more serious.

“I sleep,” Cesare says, getting defensive already. He’s never dealt well with criticism, even when it was in his best interest. It’s a bad habit he earned back in boarding school when he had to explain away his family’s misdeeds. His father’s face and name was always in the papers (a fact that hasn’t changed) involving some scandal or the other, involving some woman more often than not (another fact that hasn’t changed.)

Giulia lifts a brow, smoothly. “For the entire night or in short bursts?”

It’s the latter but he isn’t about to admit that to her. His sleep-wake cycle has always been shit. At best he sleeps restlessly for three or four hours, drowns himself in coffee and goes about his day. That was how he slept most of his life unless there was a warm body in his bed: then he got no sleep at all. He’s strange that way, but there are only a few people who know this about him. His father isn’t one of them.

“My mother or my sister?” he asks quietly.

She looks more defiant than guilty when she replies, “Before she left Lucrezia asked me to check up on you every once in a while. Are you really blaming me for listening to her?”

He finds that he really can’t.

-

Lucrezia breezes back in New York on 1 A.M a Thursday, the day of the funeral of one of the most respected men in America. She has an array of dresses and skirts she bought in from Paris, some blazers and cardigans from London and heels and boots from Spain. Her hair is six inches longer, stopping just below her waist (she really needs a trim), and she has a tan. She looks healthy and attractive, but she still takes the night before she sees anyone. There is a blessed lack of reporters when the town car drives her to Cesare’s apartment. He owns the building and Lucrezia’s on good terms with the help.

Somehow, despite her secrecy, Micheletto is there at the doors to greet her. She should have known. Nothing ever really gets past Micheletto. He waves the doorman away and takes her bags up with her on the elevator. She _should_ use her key and slip inside silently, see her brother in the morning, but she’s always had a poor time doing what she should. She knocks, three raps, but it’s enough to wake Cesare, if he’s even asleep. He has a terrible sleep pattern, her brother. She inhales as she hears the sound of shuffling behind the doors. He opens the door, bleary eyed and bare-chested and he barely has the time to steady himself before she flings herself into his arms sending them both stumbling a few steps backwards. There’s no hesitation as his arms wrap around her and for the first time in months she feels utterly safe, utterly complete.

“I missed you,” she murmurs into his chest, barely noticing Micheletto bringing in her travel bags three at a time.

“I missed you too, my love.” Cesare whispers into her hair.

Micheletto gives them a brief nod, after bringing in all ten of her bags, and turns around and leaves.

She’s kissing him desperately before the door even closes. If he’s caught by surprise it only takes him a moment before he slants his mouth over hers, his hands lifting her by the waist so that her feet just dangle over the floor.

When he sets her down his hands don’t leave her waist. Her face is still tilted upwards and he bends down to nudge her nose. She smiles.

His hands moves their way up her sides, her arms, her neck and cradles her face as he smiles down at her.

“I missed your face,” his voice sounded thick.

“Well I missed your everything.”

One of Cesare’s hands slides across her jaw and down her neck, circling it with his hand in a light grip, the other holds her cheek in his hand and she nuzzles into it – the familiarity of it all.

They stay like that for the space of a few heartbeats until Lucrezia demands, “Kiss me again,”

“Are you sure?” Cesare asks, wary in a way he never is around her. His hand leave her neck and rests gently on her shoulders. His other hand still cradles her face.

“I wouldn’t be asking if I didn’t want you to,” she says, looking directly into his hazel eyes. “I want you to make love to me. I want – just you. I want you.”

Cesare looks at her intently before he bends down to nestle his face into her hair and take a deep breath.

His breath tickles her neck as he says, “You have me. Always.”

-

Cesare wakes up to the scent of Lucrezia in his bed – she isn’t there currently but his pillows the smell of her shampoo is, and there’s the faint scent of that light perfume she always wears – and he smells _them_ on his sheets.

He thinks of how they made love on his bed last night, wilder and more passionate than they ever had before. A lesser person would blush but he doesn’t feel any shame: he feels nothing but triumph mingled with relief. In the end, after her leaving and roaming for so long, she was still his. He didn’t lose her. It was a victory he didn’t want to celebrate alone – shouldn’t have to – where is his sister?

He searches through his vast penthouse for her. He finds her in the large kitchen and it smells like something out of his distant memories. Sweet and delectable, it opens a sort of nostalgia in him that he doesn’t understand.

Lucrezia standing in the middle of the kitchen pouring and putting trays in the oven was a bigger surprise; he’s never known her to even toast a slice of bread before. He expected to find her in any other room. 

“Since when can you even cook Crezia?” Cesare asks with real bemusement.

“You haven’t called me that since I was little,” Lucrezia smiles faintly.

“You’re still little.”

“Height jokes don’t work on me anymore, Gigantor,” she replies loftily. “It’s not my fault you’re like the size of a building.”

Cesare laughs and she grins back at him.

“I learned from abuelita if you must know,” Lucrezia says returning to the topic at hand. “And we haven’t had magdalenas since we were kids and we lived with mama. I thought you might like them.”

So that’s what that smell is. He vaguely remembers their mother giving the cook morning offs some weekends and waking up early to make traditional Spanish breakfasts for them. His father at the head of the table as dignified in his silk nightwear as he was in his suits, looking fondly at his children, Juan dashing next to his mother to pick at the serving dishes, filling himself before he even sat at the table. Lucrezia eating with pleasure and making such a mess that Vannozza had to come feed her herself. The smell reminds him of family.

“Or do you not want any?”

Cesare wrinkles his nose and Lucrezia laughs.

She puts her final tray in the oven and wipes her hands on her apron before running at him and wrapping one arm around his neck and cupping his cheek with the other hand: her feet dangles off the floor as he holds her around the waist like last night. She kisses him deeply and his brain can’t pay attention to anything but Lucrezia. Lucrezia surrounding him, Lucrezia’s hair brushing his face, Lucrezia’s arms, tightening around him; when she pauses to take a breath, he kisses her on the tip of her nose and she smiles, bright and sunny.

He kisses her again. Anything to keep that smile on her face.

Her fingers still trace his face, even when he pulls away again, to take a breath.

“We should talk shouldn’t we?” she asks him as soon as her feet touch the ground once more and the childish part of his brain screams “No!” wanting them to stay in this perfect limbo; not talking about why she left and what she’s come back to, but fate never seems to listen to his desires.

“What do we need to talk about?” he asks, already knowing that feigning ignorance won’t help him.

Lucrezia shakes her head and huffs indignantly before her thumb reaches the crease of his chin and she strokes the indent lovingly.

“Nothing now,” she says after a few minutes of silence. “After the funeral however, that’s a different story.”

-

The funeral is as ostentatious as Lucrezia expected it would be. The Medici family is made up of successful politicians and business men and women. They started from nothing and made their way to the top, much like her family did. But they were different, they were beloved. Like the Kennedy’s.

She sits in the second row, next to her father and her brother. Her mother, Giulia, and Juan all sit quietly, the expressions of their faces are all different variations of bored. She could tell because she knew them so well, to the outside world, they look nothing less than grieved and dignified. Even Juan knows when to play his part.

So different than when they saw her earlier at the mansion her family calls home. It seemed as though she was truly missed. Her father hugged her and swung her around, laughing with her in his arms, holding her tight. Her mother kissed both her cheeks and grinned. Giulia kissed her cheek and pressed their hands together, giving her a rare flash of teeth as she smiled. Juan simply lifted his hand, his eyes narrowing on her hand in Cesare’s. Truthfully, her hands barely leave her brother’s for the entire day. Juan didn’t say anything as she recounted the adventures she had on her journey. He had none of the questions everyone else had, but he seemed not as sullen as usual as he finally gave her a brief hug, and she took that as a victory.

They all came to the cathedral together to pay the appropriate respects to an important figure. She could see the calculating glint in her father’s eyes not too long ago when he gave Piero a tight hug and shook Clarice’s hands, genially while the cameras flashed.

Now he sits, with his family, dabbing his dry eyes with a handkerchief at a funeral being broadcasted on national television.

A part of her wants to roll her eyes at her father’s theatrics, but she doesn’t. She just keeps tracing patterns on Cesare’s hands, her expression as grim as she could muster up.

She leans over and whispers in Cesare’s ears, “It would be so much easier to pretend to be sad if this wasn’t such a farce.”

Cesare’s lips twitch. He turns to her and murmurs, “I thought faking your way through life is how you survive high society.”

She suppresses a laugh and squeezes Cesare’s fingers. He glances at and smiles that smile that’s usually reserved for her. Looking at back him she found what she was looking for when she picked up and left New York.

Acceptance. Family. Love. Home.

She turns to listen to the priest continue his sermon and she finds she doesn’t want to leave it like that again, and she’s going to make sure that nothing in the world would ever make her.

**Author's Note:**

> Ah. Well, this piece of work was a labour of love. I'm pleased with the outcome. I planned on it being a two-shot but incorperating Lucrezia's POV with Cesare's worked for me. 
> 
> This is not a writing style I'm used to, but I was trying to get across a rough, sharp but still melancholic vibe all while mixing show canon with history and modernising them both. I don't know how well it worked, but if you've reached this far, that means you read the whole thing, so thanks for reading xx.


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